Reasoning about alternative forms is costly: The processing of null and overt pronouns in Italian using pupillary responses

Vogelzang, Margreet; Foppolo, Francesca; Guasti, Maria Teresa; Rijn, Hedderik van; Hendriks, Petra

doi:10.1080/0163853x.2019.1591127

Cited by 2 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 30 publications

(54 reference statements)

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“…Without any training in Italian (Figure 3, test 2), the model interprets Italian overt pronouns as referring to the subject of the main clause in almost all cases (98%). This is different from the way overt pronouns are interpreted by native speakers of Italian; in a study by Vogelzang et al (2020) with sentences like [1] in a story context, adult native speakers of Italian provided 39% subject responses for overt pronouns. Null pronouns, which were not encountered before by the model because Dutch does not have null Petra Hendriks, Margreet Vogelzang pronouns, are nevertheless interpreted by the model as referring to the subject in most cases (82%).…”

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confidence: 84%

“…Null pronouns, which were not encountered before by the model because Dutch does not have null Petra Hendriks, Margreet Vogelzang pronouns, are nevertheless interpreted by the model as referring to the subject in most cases (82%). This corresponds to the way the native speakers of Italian in the study by Vogelzang et al (2020) interpreted null pronouns, providing 86% subject responses. The results of Tsimpli et al (2004) with native Italian controls on sentences like [1], but in a task different from that of Vogelzang et al (2020), show the same pattern of interpretations for overt and null pronouns, contrasting with the results of model 1.…”

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confidence: 85%

“…Null pronouns are generally used to refer to the most prominent referent in the linguistic discourse, and overt pronouns are generally used to refer to a less prominent referent (cf. Carminati, 2002;Filiaci, 2010;Tsimpli et al, 2004;Vogelzang et al, 2020).…”

Section: Pronoun Use and Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This process of perspective taking may not only be relevant in pronoun production, but also in pronoun comprehension. Vogelzang (Vogelzang, 2017;Vogelzang et al, 2020) argues that null pronouns in Italian are grammatically encoded to refer to the most prominent referent (i.e., the discourse topic), but that overt pronouns in Italian may be ambiguous in their reference. To disambiguate overt pronouns, the listener will have to reason about the referential choice of the speaker and whether the speaker would have used an overt pronoun to express the intended meaning.…”

Section: Petra Hendriks Margreet Vogelzangmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This process of perspective taking is expected to be cognitively demanding. Indeed, using pupil size as a measure of cognitive effort, Vogelzang et al (2020) found that in monolingual Italian adults the increase in pupil size was smaller for null pronouns than for overt pronouns. This indicates that, in Italian, null pronouns are less costly to process than overt pronouns.…”

Section: Petra Hendriks Margreet Vogelzangmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pronoun Processing and Interpretation by L2 Learners of Italian: Perspectives from Cognitive Modelling

Hendriks¹,

Vogelzang²

2020

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How do second language learners acquire form-meaning associations in the second language that are inconsistent with their first language? In this study, we focus on subject pronouns in Italian and Dutch. A native speaker of the non-null subject language Dutch learning the null subject language Italian as a second language will not only have to learn to use and comprehend null pronouns, but will also have to learn to use and comprehend overt pronouns differently in the L2 than in the L1. The interpretation of Italian overt pronouns, but not of Dutch overt pronouns or Italian null pronouns, has been argued to require perspective taking, specifically the use of hypotheses about the conversational partner's communicative choices to guide one's own choices. Therefore, a related question is how perspective taking and cognitive constraints influence L2 acquisition of such forms. Using computational cognitive modelling, this study explores two learning scenarios. In cognitive model 1, second language acquisition proceeds in the same way as first language acquisition and is based on the same grammar. In cognitive model 2, second language acquisition differs from first language acquisition and involves the construction of a partly different grammar. Our results suggest that the second scenario may be cognitively more plausible than the first one. Furthermore, our models explain why second language learners of Italian perform less native-like on overt pronouns than on null pronouns.

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confidence: 84%

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confidence: 85%

Section: Pronoun Use and Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Petra Hendriks Margreet Vogelzangmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Petra Hendriks Margreet Vogelzangmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pronoun Processing and Interpretation by L2 Learners of Italian: Perspectives from Cognitive Modelling

Hendriks¹,

Vogelzang²

2020

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How Children Process Reduced Forms: A Computational Cognitive Modeling Approach to Pronoun Processing in Discourse

et al. 2021

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Reduced forms such as the pronoun he provide little information about their intended meaning compared to more elaborate descriptions such as the lead singer of Coldplay. Listeners must therefore use contextual information to recover their meaning. Across languages, there appears to be a trade‐off between the informativity of a form and the prominence of its referent. For example, Italian adults generally interpret informationally empty null pronouns as in the sentence Corre (meaning “He/She/It runs”) as referring to the most prominent referent in the discourse, and more informative overt pronouns (e.g., lui in Lui corre, “He runs”) as referring to less prominent referents. Although children acquiring Italian are known to experience difficulties interpreting pronouns, it is unclear how they acquire this division of pragmatic labor between null and overt subject pronouns, and how this relates to the development of their cognitive capacities. Here we show that cognitive development can account for the general interpretation patterns displayed by Italian‐speaking children and adults. Using experimental studies and computational simulations in a framework modeling bounded‐rational behavior, we argue that null pronoun interpretation is influenced by working memory capacity and thus appears to depend on discourse context, whereas overt pronoun interpretation is influenced by processing speed, suggesting that listeners must reason about the speaker's choices. Our results demonstrate that cognitive capacities may constrain the acquisition of linguistic forms and their meanings in various ways. The novel predictions generated by the computational simulations point out several directions for future research.

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Reasoning about alternative forms is costly: The processing of null and overt pronouns in Italian using pupillary responses

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Cited by 2 publications

References 30 publications

Pronoun Processing and Interpretation by L2 Learners of Italian: Perspectives from Cognitive Modelling

Pronoun Processing and Interpretation by L2 Learners of Italian: Perspectives from Cognitive Modelling

How Children Process Reduced Forms: A Computational Cognitive Modeling Approach to Pronoun Processing in Discourse

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